-Robert Neuwirth, "Shadow Cities"
Today we went to Kibera with our program director, which may or may not be the largest urban informal settlement (slum to use the less politically correct term) in the world. As far as surreal moments go in my experiences with traveling in my life, I would say this is up there with visiting the Mae-La Refugee Camp on the Thai-Burma border. The description of Kibera that I posted is taken from a book called "Shadow Cities" about the world's informal settlements, and it is completely accurate to what I saw.
Walking around the streets in the narrow pathways you climb over the ashes from trash that has burned, see thousands of paper bags and garbage off to sides and smell the plethora of scents that come from the trash that litters the streets, the smoke from the burning trash and the people frying food in their pans in front of little shacks, and the smell of raw sewage which floats in the latrine that follows the main path. A little boy about 2 years old urinates into the street the equivalent of a few blocks in front of us, and other boys play around in garbage areas. On a more elevated location I stopped to look around and as far as the eye could see there are rows and rows of tin roofs which cover the mudbuildings. While walking through Kibera I kept thinking "this is the Africa that is portrayed on Western Media, this is picture of Africa that I have seen all my life and have heard about all my life that causes normal people to become burned out do to compassion fatigue.
This is not the story of Kibera that I want to write however. You have heard this story of Africa all your lives and it is grossly inaccurate.
The story I want to give you of Kibera is one that was even more surprising on so many levels. For being an informal settlement, Kibera is extremely developed. The whole main road is lined with shops selling anything from clothes, tools and fruit and other foods to radios, televisions, batteries. There are barbershops and beauty salons, bars, and even an Internet cafe. The lineup, goods, and types of shops found in Kibera are absolutely no different than the shops you would find in downtown Nairobi. The only difference is one area the buildings are all made of mud and tin roofs, while the other has glass and steel and concrete. This honestly surprised me, as I was expecting desolation in the midst of what we would identify as extreme poverty.
The people in this setting were also more lively than the people who work in Nairobi. They were not shy to greet you and the little children would see you coming from far away and would run up and greet you saying "How are you?", and shake your hand and jump up and down. While viewing the children, I could not help but think back to my trip to Thailand last year and a particular instance in which we traveled to an indigenous Hmong village in the Thai countryside. As soon as we got out of our vans the children would run up and chant "Hello 10 baht", trying to sell us necklaces and bracelets. These children in Thailand reminded me of zombies who would follow us around, brainwashed to see a white person as a dollar sign and not a person.
In a stark contrast... these children here in Kibera (one of if not the most famous and largest informal settlement in the world) would spot us white people from a distance and would also chant "How are you" in unison. However they did this with bright, smiling, warm faces and did not view us as just money, but just out of the curiosity of being different." It is this sort of thing that makes me believe in a positive future in Africa-Western behavior, as the youth have not yet been corrupted at a young age. A director at one of the organizations told us not to underestimate the people of Kibera, as there are alot of extremely smart people who live here who have higher education degrees. I think that we should not underestimate the African people, who are able to make a fully functioning, highly developed area out of the largest illegal informal settlement on the continent, if not the planet.
Walking around the streets in the narrow pathways you climb over the ashes from trash that has burned, see thousands of paper bags and garbage off to sides and smell the plethora of scents that come from the trash that litters the streets, the smoke from the burning trash and the people frying food in their pans in front of little shacks, and the smell of raw sewage which floats in the latrine that follows the main path. A little boy about 2 years old urinates into the street the equivalent of a few blocks in front of us, and other boys play around in garbage areas. On a more elevated location I stopped to look around and as far as the eye could see there are rows and rows of tin roofs which cover the mudbuildings. While walking through Kibera I kept thinking "this is the Africa that is portrayed on Western Media, this is picture of Africa that I have seen all my life and have heard about all my life that causes normal people to become burned out do to compassion fatigue.
This is not the story of Kibera that I want to write however. You have heard this story of Africa all your lives and it is grossly inaccurate.
The story I want to give you of Kibera is one that was even more surprising on so many levels. For being an informal settlement, Kibera is extremely developed. The whole main road is lined with shops selling anything from clothes, tools and fruit and other foods to radios, televisions, batteries. There are barbershops and beauty salons, bars, and even an Internet cafe. The lineup, goods, and types of shops found in Kibera are absolutely no different than the shops you would find in downtown Nairobi. The only difference is one area the buildings are all made of mud and tin roofs, while the other has glass and steel and concrete. This honestly surprised me, as I was expecting desolation in the midst of what we would identify as extreme poverty.
The people in this setting were also more lively than the people who work in Nairobi. They were not shy to greet you and the little children would see you coming from far away and would run up and greet you saying "How are you?", and shake your hand and jump up and down. While viewing the children, I could not help but think back to my trip to Thailand last year and a particular instance in which we traveled to an indigenous Hmong village in the Thai countryside. As soon as we got out of our vans the children would run up and chant "Hello 10 baht", trying to sell us necklaces and bracelets. These children in Thailand reminded me of zombies who would follow us around, brainwashed to see a white person as a dollar sign and not a person.
In a stark contrast... these children here in Kibera (one of if not the most famous and largest informal settlement in the world) would spot us white people from a distance and would also chant "How are you" in unison. However they did this with bright, smiling, warm faces and did not view us as just money, but just out of the curiosity of being different." It is this sort of thing that makes me believe in a positive future in Africa-Western behavior, as the youth have not yet been corrupted at a young age. A director at one of the organizations told us not to underestimate the people of Kibera, as there are alot of extremely smart people who live here who have higher education degrees. I think that we should not underestimate the African people, who are able to make a fully functioning, highly developed area out of the largest illegal informal settlement on the continent, if not the planet.
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